Smithsonian exhibit is bittersweet triumph

Their temperaments were worlds apart. She was well-connected, high society. He was a blue-collar loner.

But Marilyn Mennello and Earl Cunningham had one thing in common: a vision of paradise. He created it. She believed in it. In the end, that was more than enough.

FOR THE RECORD - **********CORRECTION OR CLARIFICATION PUBLISHED JULY 25, 2007**********The continuation of an article on Page A9 Monday about an exhibit at the Smithsonian American Art Museum misidentified former U.S. Sen. Paula Hawkins.***********************************************************************

Their improbable collaboration, linking a curmudgeonly St. Augustine painter with a charismatic Winter Park socialite, will soon occupy a national stage, when a three-month exhibit of Cunningham's paintings opens Aug. 10 at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington.

It's a triumph with tragic overtones, one that neither the artist nor his patron lived to see.

Mennello was a cultured woman who charmed presidents, befriended senators and turned strangers into volunteers. Cunningham was a lonely man, suspicious of authority, estranged from his family, a self-taught artist who found solace by retreating to his makeshift studio to paint. There, he created Eden-like coastal landscapes, part memoir, part dreamscape, loosely based on shoreline vistas he remembered from happier days as a seaman aboard commercial schooners in the 1920s and '30s.

Friendless and in failing health, ridiculed by many and unrecognized as a serious artist, he put a gun to his head and committed suicide in 1977 at age 84.

But it was not before he found a champion -- or rather, before his champion found him.

Captivating scenes

In 1969, Mennello wandered into his St. Augustine curio shop on a whim, talked her way into Cunningham's one-man art museum and studio in a back room, and was captivated by what she saw. Viking ships and square riggers shared harbors with canoes. Hobbitlike fishermen stood alongside fancifully drawn animals, watching ships with bright-blue sails glide beneath preternatural sunsets of purple and orange.

She bought a painting. Cunningham confided in her that he wanted all of them to one day be on display in a museum. She encouraged him, arranging an Orlando exhibit. But they lost touch, and it wasn't until 1984 that Mennello learned of his death and began collecting his paintings, finding most of them scattered among relatives who had stashed them in attics and closets.

She introduced the works to art scholars, arranged for Cunningham books and videos, and exhibits from Orlando to New York City. She took her campaign all the way to the White House, where she met President Bush, presenting him with a painting -- and quietly slipping him a donor card that invited him to contribute to the Mennello Museum of American Art.

The Orlando museum was the fulfillment of Cunningham's dream -- a home for the paintings of harmony and peace he had crafted during all those years of bitterness and solitude. Marilyn Mennello campaigned 10 years for it, overseeing its opening in 1998 and never letting up. She was still holding meetings with the museum's inner circle of staffers and volunteers, sometimes from her hospital bed, in the last days of her life.

At a board meeting last fall, she made a promise to stay alive long enough to see the Smithsonian tribute, the culmination of her crusade.

But it wasn't to be. Last October, she died of leukemia. She was 81.

"It isn't fair," said her husband, Michael Mennello. "She wanted more than anything to live long enough to see this exhibition. We all believed she was going to make it. But they were false hopes."

There is grief in his voice and in his pale, drawn features. Mennello, 74, lives alone now in Casa Bianca, the couple's Winter Park mansion, which was for many years a vibrant, high-society hub.

It also was a residence where Earl Cunningham always had a place.

"He was such a constant presence in our lives that there were times I felt it was a little bit of a crowd," Mennello recalled. "We even named our cat Earl Cunningham. Friends would call us -- they still call -- and say, `Look out the window. It's a Cunningham sky.' "

Smithsonian exhibit

There will be 50 Cunningham paintings in the exhibit, on loan from 23 private collectors and 13 museums, including the Mennello Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Folk Art Museum. Most are paintings that were rescued by the Mennellos.

Many of the private collectors are Central Floridians who were part of a loyal corps of art lovers and friends who got caught up in the Mennellos' Cunningham campaigns.

Former state Sen. Paula Hawkins lent a harbor scene filled with sailboats. "It has a schoolhouse, a lot of American flags -- very patriotic, and I was drawn to that," she recalled.

Longtime Mennello friends and museum volunteers Rick and Joyce Appelquist lent "The Red Sea," a rocky seascape with a cove and a distant lighthouse.

"She had a passion for art that we all got caught up in," said Joyce Appelquist. "It's a passion we will all carry on."

Cunningham is likely to attract a much broader national and international audience as a result of the exhibition, which will be followed by a national tour in 2008.

Elizabeth Broun, director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, has been a friend of the Mennellos long enough to have watched their Cunningham campaign from its earliest moments.

"Frankly, at first, I was a little skeptical," she said. "I thought they were quite naive. But they managed to set up and run a museum that is now a fixture on the American art map in a way the rest of us could never have imagined."

"She lived long enough to see that it was going to happen," said Marena Grant Morrisey, director of the Orlando Museum of Art. "But it's sad she won't be there at the opening. She won't be here to plan the party. And no one could plan a party the way Marilyn could."